Unit 4/ Blog 1- Pen Pals

After doing some readings of different articles, I found something that hit home for me.  There is this school in North Carolina that has a class involved in pen pals with a school in Columbia.  Both classrooms are participating in dual-language programs.  Just recently the students were able to communicate with each other via face to face over the internet.  This was a very special moment for the students because they were able to actually meet their pen pals and talk to them and ask questions about their culture.  The students from both schools were able to share some differences and similarities in their countries.

It is so nice to see that the idea of Pen Pals is still taking place in schools.  It is a great form of communication between classes and can really create great memories for the students.  I remember having pen pals within my elementary classes and it was always exciting when we would receive letters from them.  We were all excited to rip open our letters and read what they wrote to us.  Answering questions that they would ask and in turn asking questions about them and their class was always exciting.  

What makes these two classrooms even more exciting is that they are from different cultures.  This is awesome to read because they are not working on bridging the gap in communication but they are also learning what happens within different cultures.  This is beyond what my pen pal experience was like.  For me, my elementary classes would exchange letters with my mother's elementary class she taught in a different school district.  So we could compare different classroom things, but was not really able to talk and compare cultural differences.  During my time we also could not hop on the internet and connect with the other class and have face to face conversations.  I think it's amazing that these students had the opportunity to meet their pen pals over the internet. 

 Schools and classrooms need to continue to do these types of communications.  It gives students experiences in which they would not normally get.  These students are meeting new people and are able to talk and understand different cultures.  This not only will help bridge the communication gap, but it will help make our future generations appreciate the different cultures and we may be able to work together to build better futures for everyone around the world!